How to speed up this sites loading

hjb_2 · 28 September 2005 at 6:59PM

The home page of this site takes around 40 seconds to load on a 56k modem. 40 seconds!
The target for a websites home page should be sub 15 seconds. Ideally 8 seconds or less.

Here are my tips (not including optimising the forum scripting):

optimise your images:
img/logo-l.jpg and
img/logo-r.jpg the main images on every page are huge. Either get rid or optimise them. using the dynamic drive image optimiser you should be able to take at least 25% off both of the images http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/index.php
If you insist on having them on your home page think about removing them from the forum pages.
The menu on the left is lovely but you don't need to use images on a menu. Each of those options is over 2kb thats nearly a second each on a 56k modem.
Latest money saving articles. How many???!!!??? Nobody really scrolls through all those. I bet you could halve that number and nobody would even notice.

OMG!
On viewing the source of your home page I am starting to wonder how this site even survives. All looks fine until you scroll down to just past half way and the html actually starts again!

This is an extract from the source:

<TR vAlign=top><TD width=32> </TD>
<TD width=100%><font size="2"><span class=subhead4><font size="2">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>UK's only money saving expert</TITLE>
<META content="UK's only money saving expert - Martin Lewis" name=DESCRIPTION>

two lots of html tags, two lots of head title and body tags. I'm in shock.

Martin this is serious fella, I suggest you get someone to sort it ASAP.

When you hired a new web designer Martin I hope you got a good one because the task he/she has is a mountain. I wish them well.

hjb_2 · 28 September 2005 at 7:28PM

Just one other things. Virtually every link and image reference is hard coded:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/whatever/file.jpg for example.

If you made all the links and file calls dynamic you could save loads of code.

Turning
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com
into
../ or ../../
more than 100 times a page is a considerable saving.

MSE_Martin · 28 September 2005 at 10:38PM

thanks hjb - we are in the process of a redesign - i will ensure MSE Dev reads this

ukbill69 · 30 September 2005 at 5:18PM

Who is on dial up now days lol. I think that dial up is a old age tech that no ones cares about these types of people, as the internet is based for broadband people now days. Broadband is so cheap now, its prob cheaper than dial up.

Edinburghlass_2 · 30 September 2005 at 6:35PM

I hope you will find that all users on MSE are cared about wether they use dial up or broadband and anything that helps those users on dial up is welcome.

spankymonkey_2 · 30 September 2005 at 10:39PM

maybe dial-up is old age, but sometimes when its all we can get then we have to make do! not EVERYONE is on broadband!

Ted_Hutchinson · 30 September 2005 at 10:53PM

Some of us joined e7even.com and are currently paying for broadband but still gettiing dial up performance. (Current fault with the equipment at E7even) so anything which can be done to improve the speed of loading pages here will be worth the effort. Compared with other sites I visit this site definitely is the worst for loading problems.

Maisie · 30 September 2005 at 11:32PM

I'm with dial up on an 8 year old computer that can't take Broadband. So please think of us. Not everyone is b/b and techie minded.

msdl28712 · 1 October 2005 at 9:17AM

Show Signatures
Show Avatars
Show Images (including attached images and images in skin they use as you usually get one allready designed for dial-up.

skin they use as you usually get one allready designed for dial-up.

grownup1 · 1 October 2005 at 10:18AM

I've got broadband at home but I also read MSE on my XDAii handheld using gprs. I've got images turned off but it's still hard work to load and scroll to the discussion messages because the various banners and menus tke up so much of the top of the page. I'd love it to be simplified if possible.

Ted_Hutchinson · 1 October 2005 at 1:19PM

msdl28712 wrote:

Show Signatures
Show Avatars
Show Images (including attached images and images in

I've done the above for some time, but it's occured to me that using the User CP Buddy / Ignore Lists would enable me to cut out those posters whose content in invariably the equivalent of online litter or graffitti and whose input wouldn't be missed by me. I've therefore now got a little list and will see if it improves matters. Was trying to add ***** to the after ***** and ***** but keep getting this message

The user ***** was not found in the database. Please go back and correct this problem. You may want to check out the member list.

I can find the name in the member list and have cut and pasted it into the ignore box but still keeps getting rejected as not found.

How to speed up this sites loading

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